MuseScore - colornotes plugin generator

MuseScore (free music composition and notation software) includes a plugin called 'colornotes' - which automatically colours notes based on the Boomwhackers convention.

This page generates a plugin based on colornotes but allows you to choose the colours.

Choose a colour for each pitch by clicking at the appropriate position on the coloured gradient strips or entering a number in the number fields. The colour selection uses Hue which represents colours as how close they are to Red, Yellow, Green, or Blue. The number range of 0 to 360 reflects angles of a circle if Red, Yellow, Green and Blue were distributed equally around the outside and fade into each other.

Each pitch has three elements to choosing its colour - the first is for Hue - ranging from 0 to 360. The second is for Saturation - or amount of the selected Hue - ranging from 0 to 100. The third is for Lightness - ranging from 0 to 100.

Enter the name you would like this plugin to have on the Plugins -> Notes menu and tick or untick the box to additionally colour note stems.

Once you have made all your selections - at the bottom of the page is a large text area. Right click in this text area - choose Select All. Right click in the text area again and choose Copy.

Now go to MuseScore. From the Plugins Menu, choose Plugin Creator. Now, in Plugin Creator, from the File Menu - choose New. Right Click over the text that just appeared in Plugin Creator, choose Select All. Right click again and choose Paste. The text you copied from the text area at the bottom of this page should now be in Plugin Creator.

Still in Plugin Creator - from the File menu, choose Save As. Save it in somewhere similar to - Documents\MuseScore[x]\Plugins - (should be the default location) where [x] is the MuseScore version. Give it a unique name (perhaps the same name you used earlier for this plugin in the Plugins -> Notes menu) and click Save. From the File menu (of Plugin Creator) choose 'Close plugin creator'.

Now back in MuseScore, from the Plugins menu, choose Plugin Manager. Find the name of your new Plugin and make sure the checkbox next to it is ticked. If the plugin is not there, click the Reload Plugins button near the bottom right. Click OK.

Finally, to use the plugin. From the Plugins Menu - choose Notes - then the name of your new Plugin. It will apply to just the selection - or the entire score if nothing is selected. Run it again to turn all the notes to black.

The colour pickers used on this page are heavily based upon the Hue, Saturation, Lightness example from w3schools


Plugin name on menu: Plugins -> Notes -> ???

MuseScore version:
2.x 3.x



Pitch: C --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: C# / Db --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: D --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: D# / Eb --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: E --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: F --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: F# / Gb --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: G --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: G# / Ab --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: A --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: A# / Bb --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness:


Pitch: B --- Hue: Saturation: Lightness: